Discussing sexual violence

I’m not an expert on Gardner’s case but what I have read is the case that he went to jail for, the 13-year-old that he sexually assaulted, the mother had decided to protect her daughter from having to go through a criminal justice system and pulled back so the DA did not have as much to go forward for a longer sentence. So that speaks to me about us as a society, about how we’re looking at sexual assault.

QUESTION: Marc, you’ve been an activist in this field since 1993.

KLAAS: In the 1990s, California voters passed three-strikes-and-you’re-out, by an overwhelming majority. Then just four years ago we passed Jessica’s Law by another overwhelming majority. Californians prioritize keeping our streets safe from those predators that currently exist. I know that the first significant prevention funds were put forth in President Clinton’s crime bill in 1994. There were $6.1 billion dollars for after school programs, for various types of prevention programs for at risk youth. And that fund has only been built open since that time. Now there are billions in each state going out every year for those kinds of programs. So it’s not like we’re not looking at the front-end approaches. I think that we’re doing as good a job as we’ve ever done on dealing with front-end approaches. But on the back end it’s very clear that we continually pass laws, often times in the names of young children, a couple have been mentioned, Megan’s Law which is a wonderful law, the Amber Alert certainly, and Jessica’s Law.

One of the mandates in Jessica’s Law as it exists today in California is that before getting out of prison a potential sexually violent predator or MDO, mentally disordered offender, is mandated to undergo a psychiatric evaluation by two expert psychiatrists or psychologists. And if those individuals agree that that person is still a threat to society then the information is moved forward to the district attorney’s office so they can then begin civil commitment proceedings. And it’s a very convoluted process and one that doesn’t really capture a lot of people. But it’s in place exactly for that reason. If there is a disagreement among the psychiatrists then there are two more evaluations that are done by two more experts. And if there’s a disagreement among those then the benefit goes to the offender and the offender goes out on the street.

What I know is that since Jessica’s Law was passed the Department of Mental Health under Dr. Mayberg has summarily ignored the law. And instead of putting these individuals under that team evaluation, what they tend to be doing with the potential SVP’s or MDO’s is doing a paper screen. They’ll take the information that was sent up by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. They’ll read the record as it exists and they’ll make their determination based on that. And to date more than 17,000 of these potential individuals, of these potential SVP’s have been put back out onto our streets.